When we started building Plan Forward, our focus was on helping doctor-led practices optimize their cash-pay patients, irrespective of whether the practice was independent or part of a group/DSO.
Eight years later, this focus hasn’t changed. And this is where we excel as partners – with DSOs that grow through acquisition; where each practice keeps its brand, its doctors have a voice on how they serve patients, and the tech stack is non-standard.
The DSO Landscape Is Not Monolithic
There are two fundamentally different types of DSOs.
Single brand, consistent tech stack e.g. Aspen Dental, Affordable Dentures, DECA Dental. These organizations operate under a single brand with standardized clinical protocols, standardized pricing, standardized workflows, and a homogenous technology stack. Every location runs the same way. The executive team sets the plan, the pricing, and the fee schedule centrally, and the field executes.
Varied brands, non-standard tech stack e.g. SGA Dental Partners, DCA, Straine, Imagen. These organizations grow by partnering with established independent practices that have their own brands, their own cultures, their own patient relationships, and their own doctors who built their practices over decades. The DSO provides capital, back-office support, and operational infrastructure. But the practices retain their identity, and the doctors retain meaningful clinical and operational autonomy, including input on how their membership program works.
These two models have completely different needs when it comes to membership plans. And they need different partners.
What Homogeneous DSOs Need
For a centralized, single-brand DSO, the membership plan is just another standardized product. Corporate sets the plan structure, the pricing, and the fee schedule. Every location runs the same plan. There is no variance by practice, no doctor input on pricing, no need to manage multiple plan structures across a diverse footprint.
This is where many of our competitors thrive – their platforms are built for standardization, to create a “network” of practices accepting membership. You set up one plan, you push it across your network, and you manage it centrally. That model works beautifully when the DSO has already homogenized its operations, its branding, and its clinical standards.
What Acquisition-Focused DSOs Need
When a DSO acquires ten previously independent practices, it inherits ten different brands, patient populations, fee schedules, and possibly ten different PMS environments.
What these organizations need is a platform that can navigate the complexity in three main ways:
First, flexibility at the plan level. The ability to run different plans, different pricing, and different fee schedules across locations, while still giving the executive team the consolidated overview (reporting and analytics) they need to manage the group. A doctor in a high-cost urban market and a doctor in a rural market do not serve the same patients. A doctor may run a practice in a state that requires a license or in a state that does not. Their membership plans should not be identical. Plan Forward’s platform manages that variance simply & easily, from one dashboard managing different plans, pricing, Terms & Conditions and workflow.
Second, a support team that operates at two levels simultaneously. The executive team needs to know that their standards, particularly on revenue cycle management and provider compensation, are being maintained across every location. The field teams, the office managers, the front desk staff, need someone in their corner who motivates them to enroll patients, who can support & troubleshoot problems in real time. Our client success team is built to serve both the executive team and the front desk teams.
Third, full PMS integration, both read and write. Write-back alleviates the need for double entry, manual reconciliation, and workflow friction. Membership data flows into the PMS automatically. The front desk sees member status in the workflow they already use. And with read access, the executive team gets reporting and analytics that reflects each practice’s success with membership.
Where We Win, and Where We Don't
We are not the right partner for every DSO. If you are running a centralized, single-brand operation where every location uses the same PMS, the same plan, and the same pricing, and where doctor input on membership is not part of the culture, you should evaluate our competitors. They have built platforms specifically for that model, and they are good at it.
But if you are building through acquisition, if your practices have diverse technology environments, if your doctors have a voice in how their practices operate, and if you need a membership platform that can manage the complexity across states and locations while giving your executive team consolidated visibility and control, Plan Forward was built for you.
That is our secret sauce. It is why the DSOs building through acquisition choose us. And it is why eight years after we started this company, our customer base looks the way it does.
Plan Forward is the dental membership plan software and administration platform for doctor-led practices and acquisition-focused DSOs. Learn more at planforward.io.
